Thursday, October 30, 2008

Yes, too many Americans (unfortunately, in my view) want nationalized healthcare. Yes, they want Social Security to be made fiscally sound. But do they want Daddy Government to reach this far into their beloved 401(k) retirement plans and wreak fiscal havoc? Methinks not....

Puh-leeze, just how stupid do Democrats think each one of us is? I can see it now, President Obama and the "tax and spenders" in Congress will seize victory and turn it immediately into disaster by raising taxes, reinstating the inheritance tax, and nationalizing healthcare. (OK, I won't call it "socialized" healthcare.) Thereby they will catapult middle-income Americans and independent voters into a speed run back into the GOP camp—a re-creation of the so-called Reagan Democrats of the 1980s. Didn't they learn from their congressional losses in 1994? Didn't they learn from having to swallow eight years of the most incompetent White House governance we've ever seen (George W., that is.) Apparently not. In fact, apparently not at all.

The Democrats zeal for power will be their undoing. And it will be sickening to see all those dolts who complained about the Patriot Act (while being unable to point to a single instance of its misuse), who will sit back and applaud while the Democrats attempt to get their greedy little paws on the billions hard working Americans have managed to save for their retirement.

The most amazing thing is they are so drunk with the prospect of success next Tuesday that they don't even bother to hide it anymore.

By T. Coddington Van Voorhees VIIColumnist, The National TopsiderMembership Chairman, The Newport Club

When my late father T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI founded the iconoclastic conservative journal National Topsider in 1948, he famously declared that "Now is the time for all good conservative helmsmen to hoist the mizzen, pour the cocktails, and steer this damned schooner hard starboard." In the 60 years since he first uttered it after one-too-many Cosmopolitans at one of Pamela Harriman's notorious foreign policy black tie balls, father's pithy bon mot has served as a rallying cry for conservatives from Greenwich to Chevy Chase. Today, I say it's time for we conservatives to once again grab the rigging and set sail with the flotilla of the true conservative in this race: Barack Obama.

Trust me, I haven't taken this tack lightly. No Van Voorhees has supported an avowed socialist since great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpapa Cragmont Van Voorhees lent Peter Minuet $24 and a sack of wampum to swing a subprime mortgage on Manhattan Island. Old dad himself often recounted how, as a lad, he would command the family chauffeur Carleton to drive the Duesenberg down to the Times Square Trans-Lux so he could hiss Roosevelt. But I've taken a good measure of this Obama fellow, and I must say I like the cut of the man's jib.

Undoubtedly, I enjoyed this bit best:

But there is an even more compelling reason to support Barack Obama: Sarah Palin.

If you are a conservative like me, you guffawed when you heard John McCain announced this declasse rube as a running mate, followed by good-natured applause, thinking it was some sort of whimsical campus prank he was reenacting from his Annapolis years. This was, of course, quickly followed the shock of realizing that he wasn't joking, and all that Hanoi unpleasantness had finally driven him around the bend.

It's an inescapable conclusion that this woman has, in 6 short weeks, single-handedly destroyed the Republican party. Certainly George Bush may share some of the blame; but we conservatives must remember how our hopes were buoyed by his impressive bloodlines and Yale degree before we realized his excursion to Texas had caused him to "go native." But la Palin offers true conservatives no such extenuating graces. I mean, my God, this woman is simply awful; the elided vowels, the beauty pageantry, the guns, the crude non-Episcopal protestantism, the embarrassing porchload of children with horrifying hillbilly names, the white after Labor Day. As fellow conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan quipped to me the other day outside a Martha's Vineyard antique shop, it's gratifying to know the Gipper isn't alive to see what has become of his party.

But it's not just American conservatives who are appalled. Just last week conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and I were enjoying an apres-badminton apertif at the family weekend house in Montauk with my good friend Viscount Klaus-Maria Von Wallensheim, the conservative EU Agricultural Pricing Minister with whom I shared an Alpine chalet and manservant during our years as classmates at a Swiss boarding school. "Kloonkie" (my old school appellation for the Viscount) reported the growing dismay of the Continental Right over Palin's embarrassing enthusiasm for childbirth and Israel.

"Coddsie, old chap, " he warned, "You know I've always been been America's biggest defender in Monaco. But if you elect this ill-bred charwoman, I will be be forced to move anchor to St. Tropez out of pure shame."

Really, what we are seeing in the likes of Buckley, Brooks, Noonan, Frum and Parker is the intellectual dead wood of conservatism. They liked the "conservatism" of the A-list cocktail parties of Washington and Manhattan; the "conservatism" of Presidential and Congressional power; not to mention the cheap allure of influence and prestige. They never understood the necessity of limiting governmental power or the desirability of economic freedom for everyone.

McCain often says "We Republicans came into power to change Washington, and instead Washington changed us." There is some truth to that, but you cannot underestimate the role played by the yahoos I listed above. They were the champions of every move away from principled conservatism. Thus when Democrats proposed disastrous economic policies that ultimately ruined the housing market, so called "free market Republicans" did little but enable them. When a real conservative raised an actual objection they were dismissed with a "Don't these rubes know how things are done here?" and, sadly, often by people calling themselves conservatives.

In the end, there is a difference between being a pragmatist and being a sell-out, and it behooves us all to recognize that difference. I, for one, will not be fooled again.

There are at least two pretty effective ways to turn someone into a Republican: (1) get them married with kids and (2) get them to invest in the stock market. So, if I were a highly paid Democratic political strategist, I would make sure to spend a few minutes every day thinking of ways to get Americans out of the stock market—the faster, the better. And that's why if Barack Obama is elected president next week, 2009 may well bring a concerted and all-out effort by the Obama administration and a Democratically dominated Congress to turn the generally pro-Republican Investor Class into an endangered class by, among other tactics, raising investment taxes and ending the tax preferences for 401(k)'s, IRAs, and other retirement accounts. Here is the emerging battle plan for Operation Investor Class Rollback:

1) Hike Investment Taxes. Obama wants to raise capital gains taxes even though he has kinda, sorta admitted that it might be bad for the economy and might actually decrease tax revenue to the government. For now, he's talking about raising the highest cap gains rate by one third to 20 percent, though earlier in the campaign, he floated pushing it as high as 28 percent, a near doubling....

2) Eliminate 401(k)'s, IRAs, and other retirement plans. Democrats in the House are now talking openly about the longtime liberal dream of repealing the tax advantages of putting money into a 401(k) plan or other tax-advantaged retirement account....

Not only would removing the preferential tax treatment of these vehicles raise investment taxes by $100 billion a year and affect Americans making less than $100,000, it would surely prompt many Americans, already shell-shocked by the market's recent losses, to flee stocks. All this ignores the fact that there are trillions of dollars in American retirement accounts, and abandoning the higher-returning stock market at a probable bottom is classic financial foolishness. If you believe long term in the American economy, then you have to believe in the stock market. If you don't, then you have to admit the government won't be able to afford its promises anyway.

3) Replace private capital with public capital. But wouldn't a weak stock market hurt the economy by making it tougher to raise investment capital and lessen the return on risk? Surely, it would. But Obama is planning hundreds of billions of dollars of government "investment" in cutting-edge technology, particularly in the energy and healthcare sectors....

Fundamentally this is all designed for a single purpose, to make Americans beholden to, and dependant upon the state. The goal would be to make those with a middle class income unable to provide for their own retirement, or otherwise to direct the financial direction of their own lives.

The goal is also to limit social mobility. As the piece makes clear the trouble with people getting wealthier, from a Democratic point of view, is that they become more Republican. But if you are able to create a new class who feel the only way to have a middle class lifestyle is to have the government guarantee it for you, paid for by the pocketbooks of the rich 5%, then you will have permanent Democrats.

However, this fantasy is just that, a fantasy. There is no way 5% of Americans can pay for a middle class life for the other 95%. So, if you are anywhere in the top 50% of wage earners they are coming for your money next.

If you don't think this is Socialism then that only proves you don't know the meaning of the word.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Democrat Barack Obama has a 4-point national lead over Republican John McCain as they head into the final week of the presidential campaign, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Tuesday.

Obama leads McCain by 49 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in the three-day national tracking poll, a slight dip from his 5-point advantage on Monday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

...

McCain, a veteran Arizona senator, has sliced Obama's 12-point advantage by more than half in the last five days but he has not been able to break through the 45 percent support mark.

Probably more significant is Obama slipping under the 50 percent mark.

The real key will be to see if this signals movement in important state battles. That probably wouldn't be seen until later in the week.

I teach a "Political Ideologies" course and as such I'm a stickler about some of the terminology.

"Equality is the central tenant of liberalism."

In terms of the political ideology this is assuredly wrong. Liberalism is about maximizing freedom (thus the Latin root "liber"). Maximizing "equality" is, and always has been, a central tenet of socialism. (Which is different than communism...you seem to use the terms interchangeably).

Now, this distinction matters. For example, John Stuart Mill has always been classified as a liberal, but he would be horrified at the notion of "hate speech laws"...and rightfully so, as they are completely illiberal. That such laws are termed "liberal" in our weird world Mill would view as grotesque.

What is amazing about our society is there is no longer a popular term to apply to someone who values human freedom above all else.

Is says something unpleasant about the drift of our society.

And drifting it surely is.

(Believe it or not, any irony was completely unintentional.)

UPDATE:

Alan from Donklephant has kindly written me to let me know that their comment filter has been acting up. I'm glad to hear it because I, for one, enjoy good natured argumentation...even when, or especially when, I get worked up about it.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Pittsburgh police are still questioning a 20-year-old woman who said she was robbed and assaulted at an ATM in Bloomfield because of her political views.

Ashley Todd, of College Station, Texas, said she was using an ATM at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached her and put a knife to her throat.

Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said the robber took $60 from Todd, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim's car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using a dull knife to scratch the letter "B" into her face, Richard said.

My initial reaction is to be skeptical about the authenticity of this report. In spirit The Anchoress sums up my thinking exactly:

I did not jump on the story because I’m a New Yorker and my first thought was: Tawana Brawley.

I'll let police do their job. If there is a there there, I'll have plenty of time to be smug and hysterical.

More than 3,000 educators have signed a statement in support of William Ayers, the University of Illinois-Chicago professor who has found himself under attack as a "washed-up terrorist" by the McCain campaign of late, the Brown Daily Herald reports.

The "friends and supporters of Bill Ayers" have circulated the statement online to combat the "character assassination and slander" of the Weather Underground founder.

Wow. It is as if these educators do not understand any of the words they use to communicate in English.

Truthful statements cannot be "slander" by definition. Look the word up morons.

Watching Sen. John McCain and top Republicans swing wildly in their attempts to slam Sen. Barack Obama, with less than two weeks ago to go before Election Day, is like watching an old fighter --clearly out of gas, his legs turned to rubber, and all he can do is grab, hold, punch behind the back, just anything to try to win.

Watching the media attempt to suppress Republican turnout by portraying a tightening election as a fait accompli, is like re-watching the Nazified press in Germany help shut down all political opposition to Hitler in the mid 1930's.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

There is more at the link.

The moral decrepitude of the press is shocking to see. They have descended to depths that are positively Nixonian.

Yet, they are happy about it, because there is no one to hold them accountable.

Instead, we are presented with garbage like Joe Klein's incessant whining that John McCain is mean to him.

The O’s for Obama campaign is a two-part series of events that will take place in San Francisco and streamed globally to an online community of participants. The vision for these events is to rally behind Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama and to celebrate his victory as the next President of the United States.

O’s for Obama is the brainchild of Destin Gerek, the Erotic Rockstar (www.EroticRockstar.com). His vision is to guide participants into a simultaneous group energetic breath-gasm that happens simultaneously around the world.

Participants will be guided into using breath, sound, and movement to access their erotic energy, raise its vibration, and circulate it throughout their entire bodies, culminating in a simultaneous group energetic breath-gasm. Sound too good to be true? Come and experience it for yourself!

Gee, no thanks...but I'm already scheduled to attend a "BM's for McCain" rally.

The police chief in Bel-Nor has resigned amid questions into what he did with money from a Munchkin.

The former is Matthew Lauer, 38, longtime top cop in the north St. Louis County village, who says he's simply moving on to something else. He stepped down Oct. 10.

The latter is Mickey Carroll, 89, one of a handful of the surviving diminutive denizens of Munchkinland from the 1939 MGM classic "The Wizard of Oz." His caretaker says the chief took advantage of him.

Carroll has lived in Bel-Nor for nearly seven decades. Carroll's caretaker, Linda Dodge, said the actor often gave Lauer money at the chief's request, believing he was supporting the police by buying gear.

Dodge said that earlier this year she looked at Carroll's financial records — including at least one check made out to Lauer — and questioned where the money was going.

Dodge took her concerns to Village Chairman Kevin Buchek, who referred the case to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The case remains under investigation, said a patrol spokeswoman.

In June, Carroll sought a restraining order against Lauer, claiming the chief had pocketed a $2,000 donation intended for the village. Carroll claimed Lauer then threatened him, in phone calls and visits to his home, to change his story to make it appear as if the donation had been a gift. Lauer returned the money.

I grew up in Bel-Nor, and Mickey Carroll has always been a treasure in the village. Bel-Nor even had a celebration a number of years ago where a "yellow brick road" (actually a line of yellow paint) led to Mickey's front door. So, it is sad for me to see that good relationship tarnished.

I'm also sad to see the Bel-Nor police department tarnished. Yes, they could be a terror if you went six miles or more over the speed limit on Natural Bridge Road, but they were mostly approachable and friendly guys. The full sized Hershey bars with almonds they used to hand out every Halloween were legendary. (If you played your cards right, and had a costume that wasn't too distinctive, it was possible to snag four or five of the things over the course of the night. Sweet!)

Mostly, I'm amazed at the chutzpah of the police chief. Lord knows, I wouldn't want to cross the Lollipop Guild.

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

...

American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.

Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.

...

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."

While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.

For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ... cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

Notice, none of these are dependent upon Al Gore having a feeling in his big toe that some sort of "consensus" exists. In reality, scientific fact has always been against Anthropogenic Global Warming as a probable engine driving climate. (BTW I'm officially sick and tired of writing the nonsensical term "climate change." Climate always changes. Always has, always will. That's just what it does. Please get used to it.)

Of course this doesn't mean you won't get hysteria from organizations like the World Wildlife Fund (noted by First Things), but that is simply because they are so wedded to AGW as a tool to whip up donations that they really don't know what else to do. Basically, you have these groups, which could and should be playing a positive role in environmental debates, engaged in out and out fraud designed to help someone's bottom line. Ultimately, this will only hurt such groups as the sham that is AGW becomes more apparent. Right now they are getting by with the cognitive dissonance of the press corps who are mostly unwilling to betray their own ideological preferences to expose the truth of the matter. However, the truth will out.

The University of Nebraska has dis-invited Bill Ayers from giving a talk at a student research conference in November. Specifically, the university sited their "threat assessment group" which they claimed "monitored e-mails and other information UNL received regarding Ayers' scheduled Nov. 15 visit, and identified safety concerns which resulted in the university canceling the event."

Oh, really. Are you sure that was a "threat assessment group" and not a CYA group? Because as FIRE points out the real difficulty was not safety - quick! name me a single incident in the last 10 years where those radical right wingers on college campuses physically harmed an invited speaker. No, the real "threat" wasn't that someone would strike Ayers; the threat was going to be to the university's bottom line.

Perhaps even more troubling, however, is the distinct possibility that UNL is citing security concerns as pretext for cancelling Ayers' speech under political pressure. As InsideHigherEd.com reports today, Ayers' planned appearance had been criticized earlier last Friday by Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, a Republican, as well as Attorney General Jon Bruning. In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Governor Heineman called the invitation to Ayers an "embarrassment to the University of Nebraska and the State of Nebraska." Attorney General Bruning also called Ayers' speech an "embarrassment," stating further that "[a]cademic freedom doesn't require us to lose our good judgment and common sense." According to InsideHigherEd.com, alumni and donors echoed these sentiments, and the Chair of Nebraska's Board of Regents also called for Ayers to be disinvited. Hours later, UNL cancelled the speech.

As Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist and devoted enemy of the United State whose major lament has been that he didn't set enough bombs back in the day, it is a legitimate question to ask if he's really the most appropriate "teacher" to put before your undergraduates. However, if you are only going to exercise belated oversight on such matters, and only after it becomes a matter of public controversy, you should have the guts to own up to it. To invent an imaginary "threat" to Ayers is laughable.

FIRE continues:

If UNL decided that hosting Ayers' speech was simply too politically unpalatable a choice to defend, it should have said as much. UNL would have been forced to endure the shame that it rightfully would have earned by allowing political pressure to dictate who may speak on campus, but at least the school would have retained its intellectual honesty and avoided playing politics with school safety. In contrast, if UNL is citing "safety concerns" simply to avoid criticism for caving to political considerations, it is setting a dangerous precedent. Invoking the threat of violence as justification where it does not actually exist serves to trivialize the necessary gravity of real security concerns, and grants far too much power to administrators to cite vague and unverifiable threats any time the university wants to shut down an event with which it is merely uncomfortable. The safety of a university community should not be cited to provide cover for purely political decisions.

Note: I am making a distinction here between the university's role as an educator and its role as being a venue where students and faculty can engage at the level of ideas. Had Ayers been invited to speak by some student Democratic group, it would be totally illegitimate for the university to cancel such a talk or to interfere with it in any other manner.

However, this isn't the case here. For example, had someone under the auspices of the university invited a Holocaust denier, or some other type of vicious anti-semite, to give the keynote address at a conference being hosted by the university, it would be certainly in the school's purview to rectify such an outrage. Even then, however, you have to own up to it.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden mocked rival Sarah Palin's comment in North Carolina that she loves visiting "pro-America" parts of the country, arguing that the entire nation is patriotic.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have never been to a state that hasn't sent its sons and daughters to serve its country," Biden said Friday in New Mexico as the crowd booed Palin's reported comments. "It doesn't matter where you live, we all love this country. And I hope it gets through that one of the reasons why Barack (Obama) and I are running is that we know how damaging the policy of division ... has been.

"We are one nation, under God, indivisible," Biden shouted to the crowd. "We are all patriotic, we all love this country."

"Especially that Ayers fellow!" Biden exclaimed, "I love the way he loves his country! We are thinking of appointing him to be our Ambassador to the Vatican. He's so damn patriotic."

Biden went on to announce that everyone in America is above average.

No word has come down of a copyright infringement case from Lake Wobegone.

The attempts to destroy Joe Wurzelbacher have at last laid open what many of us have realized about the Obama campaign for many months now; it is a vile, power hungry machine without pity, remorse or morals. John McCain has finally noticed:

We had a good debate this week. You may have noticed — there was a lot of talk about Senator Obama’s tax increases and Joe the Plumber. Last weekend, Senator Obama showed up in Joe’s driveway to ask for his vote, and Joe asked Senator Obama a tough question. I’m glad he did; I think Senator Obama could use a few more tough questions.

The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.

This just proves that Mr. Burge isn't necessarily at his best when he is at his funniest.

First, a pre-emptive apology for the intentional non-humor to follow. I promise that all future non-humor will be strictly unintentional.

We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.

Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.

If it's meta-memes and meta-meta-narratives these media headlice want, so be it. I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah's candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.

Are you a Joe? Say it proud. Leave it on every goddamn newspaper comment section and online forum. Let these pressroom and online thugs know you won't stay silent when they try to destroy the life of a private citizen for speaking his mind -- because for every one of them, there are a million Joe Wurzelbachers. And for that we should all be thankful.

Keep in mind throughout all this that Joe W. did not seek out Obama. It was Obama who was going door to door, and met up with Joe as he was outside playing football with his son in his front yard. He and Obama explained pleasantries, and in turn Joe asked his question. Big mistake, apparently, considering - as noted in the link above - a local plumber’s union that has endorsed Obama is now trying to get him fired from his job. Not only that, but the Daily Kos posted Joe the plumber’s address for hundreds of thousands of moonbats to see and use as they see fit.

A while back I chatted with a University of Chicago professor who was a frequent lunch companion of Obama's. This professor said that Obama was as close to a full-out Marxist as anyone who has ever run for president of the United States. Now, I tend to quickly dismiss that kind of talk as way over the top.

Yeah. Nice going Sherlock. I'm sorry, but I'm supposed to applaud this "reporter" for withholding information presented to him by a "frequent companion" of Obama. Yeah, what the hell could someone who hung out with and talked to Obama frequently tell you that you couldn't get from Obama's campaign website.

Once again, I don't think we need to add another chapter to Profiles in Courage.

Today's poster child for journalistic corruption is James V. Grimaldi of the Washington Post.

What kind of dishonest, biased journalism is the Washington Post reporter James V. Grimaldi guilty of?

In Exclusive: Verizon and AT&T Provided Cell Towers for McCain Ranch, corrupt reporter James V. Grimaldi tries to insinuate that Cindy McCain is guilty of some sort of ethical violation because Verizon Wireless and AT&T installed portable cell phone towers to provide coverage at McCain's home in Hidden Valley near Sedona, Arizona.

Unethical reporter James V. Grimaldi writes:

Ethics lawyers said Cindy McCain's dealings with the wireless companies stand out because her husband is a senior member of the Senate commerce committee, which oversees the Federal Communications Commission and the telecommunications industry. He has been a leading advocate for industry-backed legislation, fighting regulations and taxes on telecommunication services.

I have a few simple questions for morally bankrupt Washington Post reporter James V. Grimaldi:

Other than Stanley Brand, a former House counsel for Democrats, what are the names of the ethics lawyers you spoke with, and what positions have they held within the Democrat Party?

Are any of the ethics lawyers you spoke with currently active as paid consultants or volunteers for Barack Obama's presidential campaign?

Did Democratic operative(s) in Obama campaign suggested [sic] this story to you?

Did you ever had any intention of directly informing your readers that the Secret Service requested these cell towers as a security issue?

Yes, you heard that right. Ethics-challenged Washington Post reporter James V. Grimaldi did his level best to obscure the fact that it was the Secret Service that requested these portable cell towers, as stable communications are a vital part of protecting the lives of Presidential candidates.

The damn man hasn't even been elected yet and they are already indoctrinating kids with his hagiography:

My 8th grade son is in an advanced English class at a public middle school here in Racine, Wisconsin. I just found out that my son's new (copyright 2008) Wisconsin - McDougal Littell Literature book has 15 pages covering Barack Obama.

I was shocked - No John McCain, no Hillary Clinton, no George Bush - Just Barack Obama. I'm wondering how it is that Obama's story gets put into an 8th grade literature book? It would be one thing, if it was just the tidbit about his boyhood days, but 15 pages, and they talk about his "Life of Service". Honestly, what has Obama really done to be included in this book? Not only that, but on page 847 there is a photo of Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention with at least 8 Obama signs in the background! Front & center is an www.obama2004.com sign.

Now I understand that many teachers are liberals, but does the school have the right to shove Obama down our kid's throats? All the kids grouped together and read the story. After that, they discussed it... I guess it appears that Obama is planning ahead.

Now I understand how this would have been considered "normal" in Germany in 1937, but what is it doing here.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Now word has come that a hitherto respectable publisher has issued an "encyclopedia" with an entry on "Zionism" written by an avowed anti-semite and editor of an online journal entitled "Race Traitor."

Is it just my imagination, or has the IQ of the western world dropped about 30 points in the last ten years?

WORRIED bookmakers have stopped taking bets on aliens showing up on Earth.

It follows a flurry of bets amid internet buzz that a massive intergalactic spaceship will appear tomorrow.

Videos and messages on YouTube, blogs and UFO websites are buzzing with predictions that a vessel from the alien Federation Of Light will be visible in our skies for three days.

It may all sound more oddball than odds-on - but bookies William Hill are taking it seriously enough to temporarily suspend betting on proof of the existence of intelligent alien life being confirmed by PM Gordon Brown.

It follows a rush of bets, including one punter who wanted to place a s3000 bet at odds of 1000-1.

Hill spokesman Rupert Adams said: "This is the first time an internet phenomenon has affected our business.

"We now have seven-figure liabilities if the ship does appear. We have decided to duck any more big bets until the 14th has passed, hopefully without incident."

The rumour is believed to have been started by "channeler" Blossom Goodchild, who claimed to have received a psychic tip-off.

Monday, October 13, 2008

I've been telling everyone I know here (and somewhere in the wilds of a Donklephant comment thread) that I got the feeling all the promises of cheap money from the Feds were what was "freezing" the credit market more than anything else. It looks like I'm not alone:

The Fed’s massive and numerous liquidity facilities are making things worse. The problem is more than banks unwilling to lend to each other, they are also unwilling to borrow from each other. Banks can get all the funding they need (and then some) from their central bank so they do not need to seek a loan from another bank. I believe it has gotten so bad that they don’t even bother to make a decent market for inter-bank loans anymore. No reason to, they don’t need them anymore as central banks have replaced them.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Once upon a time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s made the case that they should have access to employees to speak freely to them, and union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment.

Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

Most Americans have little idea how far the average academic would go to stamp out political speech they disagree with these days. If you like to think for yourself, Obama and his mob are no friends of yours, no matter what they say.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Would my right hon. Friend, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, make it clear that an attack on Iran by Israel would trigger off uncontrollable, convulsive and irreversible consequences that would damage not only the region, but the entire global system, and that such an attack must not take place? It would be an attack on one of the nastiest regimes in the world by another of the nastiest regimes in the world.

(In case you were wondering, the occasion for such a comment by the Labour MP was the supposed temerity of the British government to criticize a new Iranian law mandating death for "apostasy" from Islam. Nice, eh?)

Over at F.I.R.E, Robert Shibley makes a pretty convincing case that an increasing number of university administrators believe in the power of magic.

So tell me, what theory makes more sense than to suggest that...college administrators believe in magic? While I have never met any of them, there's no reason to believe that they are crazy. So how can you explain their utter rejection of context, facts, reality, and reason when it comes to uttering a single word, be it "wetbacks," "hate," or "fags?" For millennia, humans who are neither crazy nor stupid have believed that words or actions can have supernatural power. Maybe the folks at Brandeis, Gonzaga, and San Diego Mesa and City colleges have simply discovered some new incantations —syllables that cannot be pronounced under any circumstances without provoking dire results.

Really, modern universities are slowly becoming bureaucratic, Orwellian nightmares. It would be best for all involved if university administrators were humanely culled.

Monday, October 06, 2008

My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote — “take off the gloves.” Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.

Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.

...

My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.

Of course, the reaction of the MSM to this will probably be to call McCain a racist. I can hear them now:

"McCain said Obama was going to 'Take the gloves off,' an obvious reference to O.J. Simpson, and yet another attempt to portray Obama as a dangerous black man."

Note: I actually hesitated writing that because I'm half afraid it will be found and used by a MSM source.

There is one inescapable fact about the sub-prime mortgage aspect of our current economic difficulties and that is the party of Barack Obama have been a big part of the problem and have not been, and are still not, interested in being part of a solution. Maybe, just maybe, McCain is gonna fight on this point:

Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?

This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them. Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread. This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.

Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them.

Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans? Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed? If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn’t he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place? He won’t tell you, but you deserve an answer.

Amen.

QandO points out this precis on our present economic disorder which could be called Bad Loans For Dummies:

America has a long and undistinguished history of populist politicians stacking the cards against lenders and in favor of risky homeownership. Proving that good intentions are no guarantee of good policy, President Jimmy Carter's 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to make loans to low-income people, was just another legislative leg-up for high-risk borrowers. If socially laudable but economically reckless laws cause entirely predictable problems for lenders, don't be surprised if taxpayers have to bail them out.

The final proof that American social policies have made mortgage lending an unviable industry rests with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If sensible business people don't get into the mortgage industry because it is fundamentally a bad business, the American way has been to send in a couple of quasi-government agencies to fill the gap.

Fannie and Freddie dominated the mortgage industry because ultimately government was prepared to fund activities that prudent lenders would not. When their implicit government guarantee became explicit, America's system of government-directed lending on socially desirable, but commercially imprudent, lending stood exposed.

If you don't know common sense when you read it then I'm not sure I can help you.

In the popular media wisdom, Sarah Palin is the neophyte who knows nothing about foreign policy while Joe Biden is the savvy diplomatic pro. Then what are we to make of Mr. Biden's fantastic debate voyage last week when he made factual claims that would have got Mrs. Palin mocked from New York to Los Angeles?

Start with Lebanon, where Mr. Biden asserted that "When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it.' Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel."

The U.S. never kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, and no one else has either. Perhaps Mr. Biden meant to say Syria, except that the U.S. also didn't do that. The Lebanese ousted Syria's military in 2005. As for NATO, Messrs. Biden and Obama may have proposed sending alliance troops in, but if they did that was also a fantasy. The U.S. has had all it can handle trying to convince NATO countries to deploy to Afghanistan.

Now that the embargo has been lifted how long until the rest of the MSM comes to the Obama campaign's aid and attempts to show Biden's fantastical musings are actually "true"?

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Really, the degree to which the MSM is acting as the public relations arm of the Obama campaign is astonishing, and more reminiscent of the press in a totalitarian regime than that of a free country. You can really take your pick as for what is most egregious. There is the altering of logic and geography (!) in order to smear the Republican VP candidate; there is the deliberate embargoing of comment on what has to be the most bizarre and stupid statement ever made by a VP candidate during a televised debate.

Now look at the CNN response to the McCain campaign's pointing out the well established ties between Obama and Weather Underground member William Ayers:

Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools' Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked.

Gee, for a "fact check" it is pretty damn loose with actual facts. To read this you wouldn't know that Ayers was a founding member of the Annenberg Challenge, someone who guided and directed the entire organization. If you knew that you might ask how it was possible for Obama to be selected to head up the failed efforts of the Annenberg without working with Ayers. (Short answer: It isn't.)

When it comes down to it the entire "fact check" comes down to the use of "is" instead of "was.":

There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Yeah, that's right. Because that means we are supposed to believe if Obama was palling around with an unrepentant terrorist three years ago, well, that's totally cool.

Really, this is how retarded the MSM worshiping of Obama has gotten.

It's positively Pravda-esque.

UPDATE:

Oh, the press has found a way to be even more retarded. Now we are told pointing out Obama's association with Ayers (a matter of public record) is now "racist":

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign. And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

I'm sorry, but anyone who actually believes the above written material... really, the only word that comes to mind is "evil."

When the McCain campaign ran an ad that had a white woman in it, it was denounced as racist. When it ran an ad that had an African-American man (Franklin Raines) in it, it was denounced as racist. Now the McCain campaign links Obama to a white man, the former terrorist, and still anti-American, Bill Ayers. That's racist too. I think we've exhausted just about all the possibilities. The only non-racist thing McCain can do, apparently, is concede the election.

There once was a time when the Associated Press was a respected news-gathering agency. Some years ago, it began to abandon that mission in order to transform itself into a liberal advocacy organization. That transformation is now pretty much complete.

Pretty much?

Protein Wisdom has also had enough of the Sovietization of the American press.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

In her column yesterday, Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus argues for why having Sarah Palin in high public office is a “terrifying prospect.” Marcus’s specific complaint is that Palin, in her interview with Katie Couric, said that the way she has understood the world is not through travel but “through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world.” In response, Marcus writes this:

This would be more reassuring if Palin had demonstrated more evidence of having read extensively about history or world affairs. Asked in an interview for PBS’s Charlie Rose show last year about her favorite authors, Palin cited C.S. Lewis–“very, very deep”–and Dr. George Sheehan, a now-deceased writer for Runner’s World magazine whose columns Palin still keeps on hand.

It's true. The Washington Post has actually employed someone so stupid she believes the most important writer of Christian Apologetics since Pascal is the intellectual equivalent of "a Garfield desk calendar."

9 SEC. 122. INCREASE IN STATUTORY LIMIT ON THE PUBLIC10 DEBT.11 Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United12 States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limita13 tion contained in such subsection and inserting14 ‘‘$11,315,000,000,000’’.

9 (H) The efficacy of contracting procedures10 pursuant to section 107(b), including, as appli11 cable, the efforts of the TARP in evaluating12 proposals for inclusion and contracting to the13 maximum extent possible of minorities (as such14 term is defined in 1204(c) of the Financial In15 stitutions Reform, Recovery, and Enhancement16 Act of 1989 (12 U.S.C. 1811 note), women,17 and minority- and women-owned businesses, in18 cluding ascertaining and reporting the total19 amount of fees paid and other value delivered20 by the TARP to all of its agents and represent21 atives, and such amounts paid or delivered to22 such firms that are minority- and women-owned23 businesses (as such terms are defined in section24 21A of the Federal Home Loan Bank Act (1225 U.S.C. 1441a)).

Most of the outline of the bill has been spelled out by page 50, so God only knows what is going to fill up the next 400 pages...but I'm guessing it will be a lot more stuff like this.

I hope the "meek" wind up getting something because they have a hell of a time.

Ah, Congress puts it foot down when it comes to setting strict limits on how much taxpayer money can be doled out at any one time (pp. 40-41):

16 (1) Effective upon the date of enactment of this17 Act, such authority shall be limited to18 $250,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.

Booyah! Take that those that would call this deal a "blank cheque"! You are gonna have to eat your words, right? Well...

19 (2) If at any time, the President submits to the20 Congress a written certification that the Secretary21 needs to exercise the authority under this paragraph,22 effective upon such submission, such authority shall23 be limited to $350,000,000,000 outstanding at any24 one time.

Oh, I see. But, hey, this is just a safety net sorta thing. This the real strict line!

1 (3) If, at any time after the certification in2 paragraph (2) has been made, the President tran3 mits to the Congress a written report detailing the4 plan of the Secretary to exercise the authority under5 this paragraph, unless there is enacted, within 156 calendar days of such transmission, a joint resolu7 tion described in subsection (c), effective upon the8 expiration of such 15-day period, such authority9 shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at10 any one time.

Mommy!

UPDATE:

It turns out that the mechanism for keeping the executive branch from doling out up to $700b at any one time will require a joint resolution from Congress.

Think that Congress is gonna get tough on all those Golden Parachutes? Think again (pp. 32-33):

19 (c) AUCTION PURCHASES.—Where the Secretary de20 termines that the purposes of this Act are best met21 through auction purchases of troubled assets, and only22 where such purchases per financial institution in the ag23 gregate exceed $300,000,000 (including direct purchases),24 the Secretary shall prohibit, for such financial institution,25 any new employment contract with a senior executive offi1 cer that provides a golden parachute in the event of an2 involuntary termination, bankruptcy filing, insolvency, or3 receivership.

So, as long as the bailout for your company is only immense (say $250m) as opposed to colossal ($300m+) you can still enjoy your golden parachute.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I'm actually going through the 451 page Leviathan of a bailout bill line by line. I'll post things as I come across them if they are interesting. I'm up to page 32 right now.

I thought this was interesting:

18 SEC. 111. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND CORPORATE19 GOVERNANCE.20 (a) APPLICABILITY.—Any financial institution that21 sells troubled assets to the Secretary under this Act shall22 be subject to the executive compensation requirements of23 subsections (b) and (c) and the provisions under the Inter24 nal Revenue Code of 1986, as provided under the amend25 ment by section 302, as applicable.

So, far all the screaming about executive compensation, as if that was somehow the cause of the problem, Congress is only proposing limiting the firms that suckle from the public teat.